Feeling as one family

Little Masha, six, was taken by employees of the social service from her mother’s apartment in condition of alcoholic intoxication. As the girl explained later, she woke up in the morning, ate some sunflower seeds, because there was nothing else to eat, and washed it down with some vodka. Nobody knows where her mother was at that moment.

The Ministry of Family, Youth, and Sports does not say precisely how many children, who, like Masha, seem to be living with their parents but in reality are neglected.

The ministry stresses that in the past several years their number has essentially decreased, owing to the work of social services who take the children away from asocial families or from the street and accommodate them in orphanages, family-type homes, etc. And two years ago Kyiv launched a new form of bringing up this kind of children, Our Children Center. It was established at the initiative of Barbara Monheim, the founder of the German-Polish-Ukrainian Association. Centers of this kind are to be opened in other Ukrainian cities.

At the moment, Kyiv’s center houses 12 children who have previously lived in families with difficult life circumstances, and most of them have lived in the streets here and there. At the moment, some of these children are living in the so-called rehabilitation group, while the others in a family-type group. The two groups differ in terms of functions and tasks. In the rehabilitation group, the children undergo rehabilitation, whereas in the family-type group they live a life of a real family. Den has inquired about the specific features of Our Children Center and the prospects of its foster children.

The center is located on the territory of a former kindergarten in the Berezniaky district. One building has been turned into a marvelous white house, where children live, and soon the remodeling of two more buildings will start. The house comprises rooms where children study, play, do sports, as well as four separate apartments of the center’s families. Families live only in two apartments; there are plans to settle the third one, as another couple of parents will come to the center to take children for upbringing (one family can foster six children at the maximum).

The center’s head Yulia Davydova said that children are staying here temporarily. When their psychological rehabilitation is completed, the center will find a new family for them or bring them back to the biological one if the parents will like to. Some mothers, even after coming to see how their children live, have not showed any desire to take them back.

All foster children attend school classes at the center, except for those who go to kindergarten. After the classes they attend sports and choreography groups, and at home they have additional lessons with math and English tutors, as well as a correction pedagogue and a psychologist. But the main thing is that nobody exerts pressure on the children; they are doing everything voluntarily. This is the distinguishing feature of the children’s life in the center from those existing in orphanages and boarding schools.

“Some children cannot do many things that they are supposed to at their age: read, write, and even speak. Therefore, our pedagogues are working with them to fill these gaps,” Davydova says. To prove her words, she brings us to the studying room, where the correction pedagogue Svitlana is sitting at a desk, and Mykhailyk, 11, is writing something as he sits across the table from her. “For quite a long time Mykhailyk kept pushing us away; it was a problem for him that he did not know letters at all and was ashamed before his older friends because of this. But in a matter of 12 months the boy has caught up with the curriculum of the first and second grades. When he lived with his mother, he was registered at a school, but did not go there. Instead he accompanied the drivers of fixed-route taxis, helping them to collect the fare, whereas his elder brothers, Dmytro, 12, and Mykola, 14, were selling CDs. Now they all are living with us.”

During the excursion across the center’s rooms Yulia explained that the boys had just returned home from school and they did not have time to clean their rooms, which they do in turns according to a special schedule.

“So far the boys are living in the rehabilitation group. According to the rules of our center, they can spend 12 months here, after which they go back to their parents or go to adoptive families, a family-type house, etc. But it has happened so that we have been looking for parents for quite a long time. We have a couple that will live here; they have met with the children, but we need the children to get accustomed to them. On the whole, children live in the center until the age of 18,” Davydova added.

It is up to a psychologist to determine to what group the children should go as soon as they come to the center from a social service. In the end they have a prospect of finding a new family or going back to their biological one. Davydova says that speaking about parents is almost a taboo in the center.

“Now children are living here freely, because if we took them here under compulsion, they would have escaped, though there was a case when a child escaped from home, to grandma, but was brought to the center again,” Davydova recalls. “We had difficulties with Dmytro, he was very unwilling to come to the center, as he did not believe that he would feel good here. Only when we told him that he would be able to see his mother here, and she had come a couple of times, he agreed to do so.”

At first sight, it is hard to tell what burden the boys are carrying: smiling, they tell about their trips to the sea, to Poland, where they were invited to a pottery workshop by the center’s sponsors, and show the toys they have sewn themselves, yet their eyes cannot hide sorrow and sadness. After all, past life tends to leave its trace, making especially deep wounds in children’s souls, which should undergo a longer and more careful treatment.

Maria and Volodymyr Lozynsky have succeeded in healing many such wounds. They have been fostering six children in a family-type group for two years. When they just came to the center, they took Liza and Masha for upbringing. Later the family acquired two sisters and two brothers (all four biological children).

The parents say that they have had a whole range of problems with children. One of the girls could hardly stand on one foot, since she had problems with coordination of movements. Zhenia, nine, had problems with speaking: after coming to the family, he did not speak a word for 18 months, using only gestures. Now he is attending a special boarding school for children with speaking problems. Last year he already recited verses and sang songs, which is regarded as a true breakthrough by the parents. It came as a surprise for the parents when it turned out that the children did not know elementary things — for example, they did not distinguish between meat and fish.

“When I pointed at a tomato in a picture, they did not know what it was,” Maria went on.

“Neither did they know anything about the way cherries, apples, and strawberries grow,” Volodymyr added. “They did not even understand what it is to slide on ice outdoors in winter, as they were all the time kept in the apartment. Svitlanka is seven, but she still goes to kindergarten, because she is not yet ready for school and needs to play more. We still have some problems remaining: the main one is emptiness, both social and organic, that should be filled. And we are doing exactly this.”

In bringing up the children, the parents are assisted by pedagogues. But still, the whole burden of upbringing remains on their shoulders. Volodymyr admits that if he had known in advance what he would have to go through, he would have thought twice about accepting this job. But now the parents want to speak more about the successes achieved by the children, not their faults or failures. Mother has praised Olenka for baking very delicious cakes that can hardly be distinguished from those made by professionals.

“Liza reads 43 words per minute,” Maria went on. “It is regarded as a medium level, but she can do more. We have a tradition to go to church every Sunday, where the children attend a Sunday school. Afterwards we do the homework and arrange small performances that children give for the guests who frequently come to see us.”

Volodymyr showed us photos in which children are playing in home performances, and these joyful, truly family-like pictures prove that children are loved and being cared for.

“Our own children come for all family holidays. They are adults and have their own children,” Maria said. “Now they live in Lviv. Therefore, our greatest dream is to go to see them. And it may come true during the Easter time. But for this you should obey,” mother said, looking at the children.

“As soon as we started to work in the center, our daughter came to see us with her husband. We also had to go through certain adaptation. After a while, our niece with her sister came, followed by our son with his wife and little son,” the head of the family explained. “Owing to communication, all the negative things experienced by the children before they started to live with us have been supplanted by positive things. For example, Zhenia had strong inner aggression, but he has not always been like this. Now it should be transformed into something positive. But one cannot be gooey with him, as in this case you can put an end here and run away.”

“It happened so that at the beginning, four biological brothers and sisters were living with another family, but it has left the center, so the children were once again left without parents,” Maria added. “They would come to us, asking to live with us. Sometimes they intentionally left their things here so as to return, i.e., the children were very much worried, because they were essentially abandoned twice — first, by their biological parents and then by social ones, so my husband and I took counsel and we decided to keep them. Throughout the period of our living together we have left them once for three days, and on our return we had to calm them down for several months, because they were so afraid that they would lose dear people again.”

Listening to the parents, I kept wondering how strong and patient they must be to be bringing up children with such hard lives, characters, psychological traumas. The most important question I asked myself was, What is the source of their strength, because at the moment they are giving more than taking? In spite of everything, they say that there is no way back. Therefore, they will be carrying this burden until the end. So, children are in safe hands.